Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
Both the Israeli and the American governments insist that the “Trump peace plan” requires the complete disarmament of Hamas, which, with an estimated 20,000 surviving Hamas-affiliated resistance fighters possessing guns would be challenging both conceptually and in terms of any potential implementation.
However, it may be worth noting that, while the plan refers to Hamas, it does not refer specifically to Palestinian Islamic Jihad or any other resistance movement in Gaza and, notably and understandably, does not explicitly require stripping the Palestinian people of any means of offering armed resistance to an illegal occupation, as Israel’s continuing presence on any portion of the territory of the State of Palestine has been definitively declared to be by the International Court of Justice and the UN General Assembly, since doing so would give the game away, armed resistance to an illegal occupation being an absolute right under international law.
This aspect of the plan, one of several aspects which flagrantly violate international law, suggests potential possibilities for continued resistance in compliance with international law:
Option 1: Hamas-affiliated fighters who wish to continue armed resistance could declare the transfer of their allegiance to Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Option 2: Hamas could follow the Syrian example by changing its name. Ahmed al-Sharaa (formerly Abu Mohammed al-Jolani), who until recently was subject to a US$10,000,000 bounty for his capture offered by the U.S government, changed not only his own name but the names of the “terrorist” movements which he led from the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda in Iraq to the Al-Nusra Front to the Islamic Emirate in Syria to Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and ended up as President of Syria and a darling of the West, exploiting such formal shape-shifting to pass from toxic to kosher and thereby prove that anything is possible.
An appropriate new name for Hamas would be the International Law Foundation, since, while all states supporting the “Trump peace plan” show by doing so their contempt for international law, the declared objective of both Hamas and the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah has in recent years been simply Israeli compliance with international law — the end of the illegal occupation, the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from the internationally recognized territory of the State of Palestine (the remaining portion of historical Palestine which Israel conquered and occupied in June 1967, nothing more and nothing less) and the transformation of the current two-state legality in international law into a two-state reality on the ground.
Option 3: All resistance fighters in Gaza who wish to continue resistance could announce their unification in a new International Law Foundation or under some other name while making clear their willingness and intention to disarm once the illegal occupation ends, the State of Palestine is duly installed and operating on the ground and, hence, resistance to occupation is no longer necessary.
International law has long been on life-support as a result of the repeated consequences-free assaults against it by Israeli and American governments.
Perhaps, in the wake of all the horrors and sacrifices of the Gaza genocide, which may not have ended, continuing inspirational Palestinian resistance and support for international law can breathe life back into it.